Twin Cities
By David Hanners
[email protected]
Friday, October 28, 2011
When the FBI began investigating the exodus of Somali men from the Twin Cities to fight for al-Shabaab, the probe cast suspicions on the Minneapolis mosque some of them attended and raised questions on whether leaders there were involved.
Officials at the mosque, Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, denied any role in the men's travels and said they opposed al-Shabaab, which the government considers a terrorist group.
Now, the denials by the mosque's leaders have been substantiated by an unlikely source - a woman convicted of raising money for al-Shabaab.
In secretly recorded phone calls played for the jury in her federal trial, Amina Farah Ali complained that when she and friends sought donations for al-Shabaab at the mosque in Minneapolis, they were turned away.
"I pray for the people of Minneapolis to come to their senses, sister," a frustrated Ali told her co-defendant, Hawo Mohamed Hassan, in a May 6, 2009, phone call.
She lamented that when people at Abubakar As-Saddique encountered the women she sent to collect money, "They chased them away, sister."
The mosque's director, Hassan Jama, did not return calls for comment. Abubakar As-Saddique is the state's largest mosque, and its membership is drawn largely from the nearly 19,000 Somalis estimated living in the Twin Cities.
WOMEN CONVICTED
Last week, Ali, 35, and Hassan, 64, both of Rochester, Minn., were convicted
on a federal charge of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Shabaab, which is waging guerrilla war against Somalia's fledgling U.N.-backed transitional federal government.Ali also was found guilty on 12 counts of providing support. The charges involved a dozen wire transfers totaling $8,608 that she sent to al-Shabaab between September 2008 and July 2009.
Hassan also was convicted of two counts of lying to the FBI.
The women, both naturalized U.S. citizens, never denied raising or sending money. They claimed it was for orphans and the poor in their native Somalia, a country left a shambles after two decades of civil war, fighting between clans, failed governments, drought and famine.
Jurors didn't buy it, concluding the women knew the money went to a group involved in terrorism or that they knew the State Department had named al-Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization.
No sentencing date has been set. They could face 30 years in prison.
PROBE BEGAN IN 2008
Agents in the FBI's Rochester field office began investigating Ali in May 2008. The inquiry was not part of "Operation Rhino," the agency's probe into the exodus of 20 or more men with Twin Cities ties to return to Somalia to train and fight for al-Shabaab.
"Rhino" resulted in charges against 18 men. Six have entered guilty pleas, two await trial, eight are fugitives and two died in Somalia.
Some of those charged and some of the men who went to Somalia attended Abubakar As-Saddique. Court documents say some of the alleged co-conspirators met to discuss their plans at an unnamed mosque, as well as restaurants and private homes.
One of the men facing charges, Mahamud Said Omar, 45, of Minneapolis, was a janitor at the mosque. But FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson, who has been involved in the investigation, said the bureau has found nothing to indicate leaders of Abubakar As-Saddique played a role in the exodus.
"We have not uncovered any evidence to date that shows the mosque leadership was involved in the recruiting or radicalization of these guys," said Wilson.
Al-Shabaab, Arabic for "the youth," controls much of southern Somalia. That is in contrast to the 7-year-old transitional government, which commands only a part of the capital of Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab opposes the U.N.-sanctioned government, in part, because it believes it was set up Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbor and long-time enemy. When the government brought in Ethiopian soldiers to retake Mogadishu in late 2006, al-Shabaab issued a call for fighters to repel troops many Somalis viewed as invaders and "infidels." (Somalia is a Muslim country and Ethiopia is mostly Christian.)
SOMALIS IN MINNESOTA ENTICED
The FBI says the recruiting effort resonated in Minnesota, home to an estimated 32,000 Somalis. Beginning in late 2007, a number of young Somali men (FBI agents sometimes refer to them as "the travelers") began boarding flights at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with itineraries to their homeland.
The transitional government has been beset by corruption and other problems, and much of the limited popular support al-Shabaab had dwindled after Ethiopia withdrew in January 2009.
After that, al-Shabaab escalated its violence, including suicide bombings that have claimed the lives of scores of civilians. Just hours before lawyers in Minneapolis were to deliver their opening arguments in the Ali/Hassan case, al-Shabaab carried out its deadliest attack yet, detonating a truck bomb on a busy street in Mogadishu, killing more than 100.
The group targets government offices and soldiers from Uganda, Burundi and, most recently, Kenya, which sent troops across the border into Somalia this month.
Al-Shabaab vowed reprisals against Kenya, and on Thursday, Kenyan soldiers and al-Shabaab troops fought their first ground battle, inside Kenya. The government in Nairobi said nine al-Shabaab fighters were killed.
Over a 10-month period, the FBI intercepted 30,000 of Ali's phone calls and searched her garbage twice a week. During the 13-day trial, prosecutors introduced 93 of the calls into evidence, and there was no evidence or testimony that any official of any mosques in the U.S. or Minnesota was involved in the women's activities.
MINNEAPOLIS SOMALIS CRITICIZED
In fact, Ali can be heard in some of the calls complaining that Muslim leaders in the Twin Cities wanted nothing to do with her efforts, with some even telling her the young men of al-Shabaab "should be isolated."
At one point in one of the calls with Hassan, Ali complained that when it came to donating money for al-Shabaab, Somali residents of Minneapolis "are the worst."
In a July 2009 call with Hassan Afgoye, an unindicted co-conspirator who was Ali's main al-Shabaab contact in Somalia, Ali said that when she tried to raise money, "some of them insult us over this matter; do you understand?"
The women raised funds by going door to door in Rochester, as well as hosting teleconferences on a phone line Ali used for teaching classes in Islam. The in-person solicitations got limited results in Rochester, which has an estimated Somali population of a little more than 800.
The government proved that between Sept. 17, 2008, and July 5, 2009, Ali made 12 wire transfers totaling $8,608 to al-Shabaab. A source with knowledge of the case said that amount is probably enough to support 250 fighters for a month, excluding ammunition.
The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the case.
The amount Ali sent is a small fraction of what al-Shabaab takes in annually. In July, the U.N. group monitoring the arms embargo against Somalia said al-Shabaab may lack popular support but it was an economic powerhouse, generating up to $100 million in revenue a year.
The report cautioned the estimate was conservative.
WOMAN'S HELP MINOR
As some perspective, the amount of money Ali wired over a 10-month period is what al-Shabaab rakes in every 45 minutes.
But, as prosecutors noted, the amount Ali sent wasn't the issue; rather, it was the fact she sent any money at all. The State Department's February 2008 terrorist designation made it illegal for U.S. citizens to send money or aid to al-Shabaab.
The U.N. isn't sure how much aid the group receives from Somalis living abroad. Al-Shabaab's main source of income is taxes, and the July U.N. report noted al-Shabaab's taxation system "is far more sophisticated and comprehensive than that of any other Somali authority."
It also generates revenue through extortion, commerce, trade and aid from other countries.
It was evident from a July 2009 call that Afgoye, a regional governor for the group, was more interested in Ali's money than in the clothes she also collected and sent.
"First of all, at this moment, the thing we need the most is wealth," he told her.
David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.